Lucas García attended the Escuela Politécnica, the country’s military academy, from which he graduated in 1949. From 1960 to 1963 he served as a congressman from Alta Verapaz. He rose steadily in the military and by 1973 was brigadier general. He became army chief of staff and was Guatemala’s minister of defense from 1975 to 1976. His election to the presidency in 1978 by a narrow margin amid charges of fraud prompted a fierce power struggle among conservative military and civilian groups.

A mass opposition movement against the government led by the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres; EGP) accelerated during his tenure in office, and Lucas García ordered a massive military response. The conflict caused mass killings among EGP members, and thousands of them fled into the mountains.
Although generally described as a moderate conservative, Lucas García was widely condemned for his repressive tactics, such as the indiscriminate killing of Indian peasants. His vice president, Francisco Villagran Kramer, resigned in 1980 in protest over human rights violations by right-wing elements in the government.

In February 1981 Amnesty International charged Lucas García with responsibility for the political assassination of 5,000 individuals. When the four main Marxist guerrilla groups who were opposed to him united, Lucas García was deposed by a military coup led by Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt and sent abroad in 1982. Genocide charges were filed against him in 1999, and in 2005 there was a warrant for his arrest for his involvement in a 1980 raid on the Spanish embassy in Guatemala, where several people were killed. Numerous attempts to bring Lucas García to trial were stifled, however, as he became terminally ill and suffered from Alzheimer disease. He was deemed not fit to testify and died in Venezuela, where he had resided since his exile.

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This article was most recently revised and updated by Maren Goldberg, Assistant Editor.

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